


on president street

by irnan



Series: interesting landings [5]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"EVIL PATENT INFRINGEMENTS," says Tony, white to the lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	on president street

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the gaslight anthem; technically takes place before the end of "writing mysteries"

Pepper hates R&D financing requests. The section managers draw them up and Darcy Lewis, bless her long-suffering heart, goes over them with the Department Head, or at least the rules say she ought to, mostly they just get forwarded straight to the Board and Pepper, but sometimes one lands on the Department Head's desk by mistake, and then they arrive at the Board and Pepper's desk covered in red mark-ups and comments that say things like "nooooooooooooo too complicated there's better ways" and "PEPPER THIS WILL BE AWESOME" and "triple this cash estimate way too conservative pep if you won't cover it i will SELL THE POLLACKS oh wait i already gave them away" and on the one hand it's really cute but on the other it's sort of unprofessional.

"I don't care," says Rachel Westlake after the first couple times this happens, "do let him play, Miss Potts, he's having so much fun."

Rachel Westlake was first elected to the Board of Directors on Howard Stark's recommendation. She and Tony are not close; in retrospect, Pepper suspects Stane was always very careful not to let any other members of the Board or the management in general build close relationships with Tony. But Pepper respects Westlake, and Westlake cares about Tony in that distant way you do care about acquaintances and the children of old friends, so that when she says _he's having so much fun_ in that brisk British accent, Pepper knows what she means _is he's so much healthier, and so much happier_ , with a large side-order of _it's so much easier to do business when your CEO and the owner of the company are not one and the same_.

Especially when that owner is Tony Stark.

So she's trying to make sense of this three-page-long block of red that Tony has inserted into Doctor Zgraggen's request which appears to be detailing the number of ways the requested amount could be halved, YES HALVED why does no one ever run these things by Tony before sending them off or Betty he trusts Betty, Bruce and Betty know what they're doing when there's a knock on the door: Erika leans in.

"Miss Potts, you'd better see this - on CNN."

Pepper perks up at the notion of an impending emergency (anything but R&D requests, really, anything) and turns on the TV.

"...brand new clean power source that will eliminate the need for oil, wipe out greenhouse gasses and pave the way for a bright new future," says the newsreader. "Questions about FNG's new SourceTech and its supposed similarities to Stark Industries' arc reactor technology, the flagship for which is Avengers Tower in New York City, have been repeatedly fielded by company spokesmen. Stark Industries has yet to make a statement on this issue."

Pepper takes a breath and feels a bubble of relief and giddy joy drift upwards in her throat. Pepper Potts, crisis coordinator extraordinaire.

She _loves_ her job.

 

*********

 

"All it is," says Coulson, "is industrial espionage."

"It's a fucking cheek," says Tony, furious. "It's goddamned cheating, Dad worked for this for forty years, I built it in a cave, you think I'm gonna let them walk away with this? Pepper, we are suing everybody. Call _Diane_ , call _Denny_ , call _everybody_."

"Tony -" says Phil.

"EVIL PATENT INFRINGEMENTS," says Tony, white to the lips.

"Look, Phil, it's a scientist thing," says Betty. "They haven't earned it, they're just hitching a ride, and it's not right."

"Nevertheless," says Phil.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," says Pepper flatly. Peggy crosses her legs and smiles at her. Pepper smiles back.

"Phil, the issue is not whether or not SHIELD ought to be worrying about corporate espionage," says Peggy. "The question is whether or not SHIELD should be worrying about the fact that someone has access to the most closely-guarded secret in the extremely large and powerful company that funds most of our budget and supplies all our non-weapons technology."

"He does _not_ fund most of our budget," says Phil, indignant.

"He funds the parts of it that pay you, which is to say, the Avengers Initiative," Maria points out.

Phil sighs. "It's a mistake to rush into anything here," he says. "You don't actually have a patent on that thing, Tony."

"Of course I don't," Tony yells, "the patent office _makes you disclose how you make it_ , do you not know about Coca-Cola, I meant it about the damn suing Pepper!"

"Tony, calm down," says Peggy flatly, and he does. Presumably she used to do that to Howard as well.

"So what you want," says Phil.

"So what I want is sneaky," says Pepper. "And quiet. And professional."

Phil glances around the table. "Ah," he says.

Natasha steeples her fingers in front of her chin and smiles at him.

"I ought to get to blow Flo's damn factory up," says Tony sulkily. "She's never been an asshole before."

"You were never her competitor before," says Pepper. "Can I just repeat that word _sneaky_ and have it underlined and highlighted?"

"I think we've all noticed the conspicuous absences in this particular consultation, Pepper," Tony snarks.

"I'd absent you if I could, believe me."

"Alas, you are not yet in charge of the world -"

"I'm in charge of _this_."

"Absolutely not!"

"Why, don't you trust me?"

Cut straight to the chase and leave him dangling. She won't banter about this for hours, not this. Arc reactor technology keeps Tony alive. Putting it in the hands of anyone else is putting his life in the hands of everyone else.

Tony's hands close, convulsively, on the table top. This isn't fair. She shouldn't be forcing him into this. He has a right to his hang-ups, to his nightmares and his fears and his PTSD. Pepper should not be shouldering him out of this business. It is his work, his father's work, his very life - she has no right.

Pepper opens her mouth.

"Utterly," says Tony. It sucks her mouth dry and makes her breath come quicker. Stop, stop, stop, you can't give me this, it's too much. Doesn't he already hold everything of hers? "Just. Keep me in the loop, Pepper, please."

She grasps his hands in hers: quick, calloused, strong hands, scarred since Afghanistan. "I'm not trying to shut you out," she says. "I wouldn't do that. But this - this needs to be done by Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. This cannot be your personal vendetta, it cannot _look_ like your personal vendetta. The more you associate yourself with the arc reactor technology, the easier it becomes for someone to realise that you're clinging on to it so hard because it's keeping you alive."

(I won't lose you. I will not lose you.)

He won't do nothing: she does not expect that of him, will not ask it of him, it's pro forma, it's for show, but it is an important show.

"All right," he says. "All right. Coulson - come on, Phil, we're outta here. All right." He stands; his hands slip out of hers. "Will that be all, Miss Potts?"

She smiles.

"Yes, Mr Stark, that will be all."

They leave; there's a silence.

"Wow," says Natasha at last.

"I wasn't lying," says Pepper. She can be ruthless when she must, but she values the good opinion of every other person in this room. She doesn't want them to think... what they're thinking.

"Of course not. You're just... very good at choosing which aspects of the truth you emphasise to which conversational partner."

"I think it's probably safe to say we've all had practice at that," says Peggy.

 

*********

 

The parking lot looks no different to any other parking lot in the greater Tristate area: there are a couple trees, a few islands of green, and, obviously, lots of cars. Right now, as far as Natasha Romanov is concerned, it looks like a nice little killing ground. She's gone blonde for this one and settled a pair of glasses on her nose. There is a slight possibility that someone might recognise her as Natalie Rushman - or was it Rushmore, she cannot even remember. It was a lifetime ago, in a different world: or so it feels.

Beside her Peggy drums her thumbs on the steering-wheel. "Hmm?"

Natasha grins. "Have a good day, honey."

"I love you darling, you'll wow them all," says Peggy. Self-mockery flickers across her face. Natasha ignores it, kisses her cheek and climbs out of the car. The married-couple cover is a popular one and she has used it before. It gives her an excuse not to socialise too much with her purported co-workers and it ensures excellent and reliable back-up. Tasha hadn’t really thought she’d ever end up respecting Peggy Carter’s skills and tenacity as much as she does, which, as Clint pointed out, was supreme arrogance on her part: _you’re jealous because you’re not the only woman in Bucky and Steve’s lives anymore, or at least not the only one they both respect as a comrade-in-arms as well as a friend_. That wasn’t true: Natasha is a paranoid assassin who trusts her own judgement of people above and beyond anyone else’s, and for a long time she had very little to go on where Peggy Carter was concerned. Yellowed paper files and drunken war stories didn’t count a jot against actually seeing someone in action, being able to gauge their abilities and personalities for herself. And besides, there were other women agents – there was… Maria Hill, and…

OK. Clint hadn’t been _entirely_ wrong.

Irritatingly, newfound respect for Peggy Carter does not mean that Black Widow doesn't miss the certainty of the other Avengers at her back, the knowledge that when her own skills are unsuited to the task at hand she yet has all that destructive power coiled at her fingertips: that if she asks them, when she says the word -

Oh sod it, fine. She just plain misses her boys. Rank and ignoble sentimentality. The next thing you know she'll be ringing one or other of them (or worse, all of them, one after the other) at three in the morning just to hear their voices.

And speaking of voices. Natasha adjusts the strap of her shoulder bag and reaches up to touch her earring. Buzz; tiny shock.

"Nat? You're on."

She taps a finger against the comm in an affirmative as the glass doors slide back to let her into the building. The receptionist has a green-streaked pony tail and a pierced eyebrow.

"Morning," says Natasha smoothly. "I'm Natalie Rand-"

"Of course," says the receptionist. "Dr Gates will be down in a minute - have a seat, Miss Rand, and welcome to FNG."

 

*********

 

Peggy doesn’t bother setting up a second bedroom for Natasha. She surveys their new cover with a jaundiced eye; everything out of place and jumbled the way a flat you’ve just moved in to ought to be, and a significant number of boxes stacked in corners.

The bed is wide and pristine and just a little bit mocking. _Everyone here has done something to prove themselves to me but you_.

That was a long time ago.

Not so long that it doesn’t still sting.

 

*********

 

"I'm not just going to do nothing!" Tony announces, gesticulating indignantly. "That's - Pepper knows me better than that."

Bruce has a fairly good idea of how well Pepper knows her wayward boyfriend. "Still," he says.

"Still nothing. We have a _leak_ , Dr Banner. Let's flush it out."

"It doesn't sound like they want us involved," Steve points out.

"It's not a question of want," says Betty in the doorway. "It's a question of applicable skill sets."

"What is it about my skill set that makes you think I can't go undercover at FNG?" asks Clint, sounding wounded.

"Well, the bow and arrow probably help about as much as the bionic arm," says Bucky dryly. "Look, are we doing this because we're worried about Tash or because we're feeling antsy? Because one's an exercise in futility and the other'll just get us into trouble."

"I'm feeling antsy," says Clint promptly.

"I have not come across the word before," says Thor.

"Antsy, um, sort of anxious, nervous, bored," explains Bruce.

"Well, but so dishonourable an injury to Tony _must_ be taken as an injury to ourselves. On Asgard it would be cause for a duel - surely something must be done!” He pauses. “Admittedly, I... would probably not deny it if you accused me of being bored."

"I feel _violated_ ," says Tony. "It's an invasion of privacy. And a betrayal of trust, and I won't rest until the culprit is safely and permanently behind bars."

"Well said," says Thor approvingly.

Betty crosses her arms over her chest and glares at Bruce.

He shrugs his refusal to argue for her side. See, the trouble is that under Tony's momentary semi-public melodrama there is sitting serious, stone-cold _anger_. Now, it's quite true that making anybody in this room that angry with you is a really fucking dumb idea. It's also true that Bruce will forever be afraid of his own rage before he fears anyone else's. But look: the Doctor put it best. Good men don't need rules. Tony Stark - like Bucky, and Clint, and Natasha, and Bruce himself - has lots of them. You _do not want_ to find out why.

Sometimes Bruce wonders if Tony didn't (doesn’t) spend so long being a careless playboy because some small voice in his subconscious was (is) afraid of what _else_ he might have become if he hadn't.

"Steve?" says Betty.

Steve looks at Tony; Tony looks at Steve. There's some silent communication thing going on there, at least as deep as the one between Steve and Bucky, or Tony and Rhodey. Iron Man and Captain America understand each other on a level most people wouldn't expect, given their differences, but general attitudes aside they're both stubborn sons of bitches with minds like steel bloody traps and a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong.

"Just let's try and keep the explosions to a minimum," says Steve.

Betty sighs. “You’re going to make me participate, aren’t you.”

“Worse,” says Bruce, grinning. “We’re going to make you do most of the work.”

 

*********

 

"And you just thought I ought to know," says Peggy, annoyed.

"It's his department," says Steve. Over the telephone his voice is a bit distant, a bit hollow, but Peggy is willing to admit this may be her imagination. She loathes holding telephone conversations with him for the obvious reason and knows he feels the same. As a consequence, they usually email when they're apart. (Once she told Maria about this, at a party when they were both comfortably tipsy, and her friend looked at her sideways and said _Phone sex?_ which Peggy finds... a shockingly intriguing notion, but not when she's on any given trip in a professional capacity.) "He can do what he likes with it."

"You're his leader, you could have told him to stop."

"No," says Steve. "I could have tried to persuade him to stop."

"Steve -"

"Peggy, listen. I love Pepper, and she understands Tony in ways I probably never will. But right now I think she's underestimating how much he needs to do something about this, even if it's only something small. No, that's not true. She's underestimating what it'll do to him to sit around and wait for _someone else_ to something."

"Some good? Teach him patience?"

"He had his patience tortured into him in Afghanistan," says Steve, sharp and angry.

Tortured - Peggy's throat closes and her faces pales.

Perhaps she makes a sound - perhaps it's her silence that gives her away.

"You didn't know about that part."

"No." She sighs. Steve is right - she can't try to take that power away from Tony, that knowledge that he is free to do as he wishes, able to fight back. Quite apart from anything else, he would most likely never trust her again. (And if, knowing now what Steve has just told her, she still tried to do so, he would be _right_ not to trust her.) "All right. Will you keep me updated?"

"I don't think there'll be much to update," says Steve. "They're basically playing a complicated game of Chinese whispers."

"Sounds like fun." She pictures him grinning like an excited child playing at spies.

"It will be!"

"Oh, I love you," she says, helplessly amused.

"I miss you," he answers, switching abruptly back to serious. "When you're not here it's far too easy to think I've dreamt the whole thing."

"That's because you've got an overactive imagination," she says briskly. Not once in nearly two years has Peggy Carter ever been tempted to believe she might not be living in the future after all. Besides, it doesn't do to let Steve brood - although, the homecoming... No. Behave yourself, Margaret. It certainly won't do to let your personal life interfere with a mission.

(That doesn’t just refer to Steve.)

Steve laughs. "Right. I love you too."

 

*********

 

Natalie has been Dr Amanda Gates' PA for three days and she is already convinced the woman is an alien robot. Gates doesn't socialise, she doesn't eat in the cafeteria, she barely appears to sleep - not once has she ever left the office before or even at the same time as Natalie has. She appears to run FNG's R&D department with an iron (heh) fist and a box of doughnuts for backup. The place is a clockwork model of efficiency and cleanliness; the other employees are friendly, they get breaks and benefits and decent pay.

It's all far too perfect.

(And a far bloody cry from SI's own robot-littered, Aerosmith-blasting, lightsabre-building, party-throwing R&D floors as well. She'll die before she admits this to Tony, but she might tell Betty that she finds she likes the SI version rather better.)

"No, Gates is seriously good at her job," says Saffy Hunt, the VP's PA, yawning into her coffee cup one morning. "I know, it's a little weird, right? The last place I worked the department heads used to put their feet on the desk and throw darts at a poster of George Lucas half the day."

Natalie's mouth twitches. "Trekkies?"

"Nah, but they all hated the prequels."

"I like it," says Natalie. "Not the prequels, God." Who ever knew Sunday afternoon movies would come in useful on a mission? "This place, it's nice, everyone knows what they're doing. I like that."

Hunt nods. "I do too."

"And we're doing good stuff, you know, this clean energy push. I think that's pretty awesome, saving the environment."

She lets, for a moment, a flash of something girlishly excited show through: the grin of a repressed idealist. For a moment she thinks Hunt approves, likes her, feels some kinship. Then:

"Careful," Hunt says. "Wilson will probably start calling you Granola Girl."

Wilson is the inevitable fly in the ointment, an unpleasantly waspish head biotech researcher who seems convinced the only way for the world to move forwards is by using corn as fuel, or something similar; Natalie isn't here to understand the research, she is here to organise things and flush out a leak - though, if pressed, she would have to admit that she's heard enough of Tony's technobabble over the last few years that she can almost make sense of some of the things the squints come out with. But you can't always get along with everyone. The part you have to remember about undercover missions is that you don't get to shoot the ones you didn't like when you're done.

Well, not usually, anyway.

"Wilson can kiss my pretty floral bonnet," says Natalie cheerfully, smiling to show a lack of malice. "I think it's admirable, what they're doing."

"Hmm."

Oh, there _is_ information here. Natalie puts a tiny frown between her eyebrows. "Don't you?"

"What? Oh, sure. It's just - it's weird that - you know, I probably shouldn't say this. I'm sorry."

"No, no of course not," says Natalie immediately. "I mean, God, you've known me two days, that'd be totally weird. No, sure. Just, as long as I'm not going to get asbestos poisoning or something!" She ends the sentence on a laugh, watching the other woman's reaction.

"Of course not! Nothing like that. It's just been really quick, this - the SourceTech. Like... lightning quick."

Obvious discomfort. Natalie takes a chance.

"Like, a month ago nobody had heard of it quick?"

Hunt's eyes flick from side to side, but apart from themselves, huddled over the coffee machine between them, there is no one in the little alcove that serves as a break room. She has the air of someone struggling with a suspicion she needs to air before it eats her up. "I don't think," she says, but it's so low that Natalie ought to call it a whisper, or a murmur, "that the CNN guys talking about - about SI - are necessarily wrong."

 

*********

 

"That's not much to go on," says Pepper. Maria, standing behind her with a hand on her chair back, purses her lips; Pepper can see her dim reflection on the screen, overlaid over Natasha's face.

"Of course not," agrees Natasha. "But I like having confirmation that my suspicions are... not unfounded."

This, Pepper feels sure, would make more sense to her if she were as paranoid as Natasha, but as she's not, it doesn't necessarily. She'd rather have her suspicions be totally unfounded and begin a long, mutually satisfying and honest rivalry with FNG for reactor tech and clean energy than live with the knowledge that someone has stolen information about the device that's keeping the love of her life alive.

Oh God, did she just think that.

She thinks something probably shows on her face even over the screen, because Natasha laughs. "Hang in there, Miss Potts," she says. "It only gets worse."

This is from an ageless super-assassin ninja who's been in love with Bucky Barnes on and off for, what, sixty years. Great.

"So what's the next step?" she asks briskly.

Natasha smiles again. "Barbecue," she says. "We timed my employment well. Peggy and I'll work the crowd and report back to you."

"Anything you need?" Maria asks.

"Not yet," says Natasha. "Give me until Wednesday before you send backup down. Anything else is a waste of resources."

"All right. We will."

 

*********

 

Meanwhile, Peggy Carter is holding an interview with Floria Norton Grant. It's a bit like conducting an interrogation, except friendlier, and Grant has a nicer office.

"Who wouldn't be flattered to interview for the London Times?" she says, laughing. "I've only done it once before, when my father died. That was a long time ago..."

"Yes - and of course a very difficult time for you."

Peggy has read that interview, of course. It is... well, it _is_ grief-stricken. And yet, the very fact that it exists at all speaks to a certain calculation under the grief, a careful planning of how and where to demonstrate that mourning. Peggy is capable of a great many things that other people would call ruthless, but deploying her emotions for her own advantage is not among their number. If Grant is capable of that, it makes her at least as dangerous, in her own way, as Natasha: not for any particular skill at hurting others, but simply for being absolutely prepared to do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

Grant smiles sadly. "Very. I was a mess."

"Surely not. You've led the company to success after success ever since."

"Up until now." Sharp, knowledgeable. Grant is most certainly not a fool. Ever since Stark Industries left the weapons business every technological industry has felt its meddling, experimental touch: phones, computers, interfaces, software, their clean energy goals underpinning everything they produce. Tony's charm, Pepper's cool head, TonyandPepper together, Steve's photographs of them splashed across every glossy magazine in North America, Europe, Asia, Iron Man and Avengers Tower - everyone in the world wants a piece of Tony Stark. As a result, their products are selling and their stock is rising; SIops is gaining on Windows a little more every month, their notebooks are already holding steady against far longer-established companies like Dell and HP, and every other company in the western world is quaking in its boots.

Peggy would be lying if she said she wasn't as proud of that boy as if he were - well, hers in a way, or her little brother at least.

"Stark Industries' recent successes have certainly been -"

"Phenomenal?"

"Unexpected."

"Not if you know Tony."

Peggy raises her eyebrows, silently encouraging.

"He plays to win," Grant explains. "When he remembers to play at all. He always has."

"Don't you?"

Grant laughs out loud. "I'm a businesswoman, Ms Carter," she says. "I don't invent, I sell, and I'm a damn sight better at it than Tony. That's the only difference between us. FNG's products are excellent but I can't brand them the way he does with the things he invents himself. It's," and here she pauses, chews on her lower lip. Grant has pale blue eyes and a thin smile, rather washed-out really, but right now she also has a spark of excitement, a look of glee. "It's going to be an interesting game, Ms Carter, that's for damn sure. And the whole world has front-row tickets."

Dammit. Peggy had been determined _not_ to like her.

 

*********

 

"Good grief," says Natasha in unconscious imitation of Peggy's own speech patterns. "Don't tell Pepper."

"I think they're rather similar, actually."

"So you don't think Grant's behind it?"

"I think," says Peggy slowly, "that at bottom, Grant's a sportswoman. She doesn't cheat. But of course, the trouble with that notion is the irrefutable fact that someone in her company obviously _is_ cheating. So if she didn't authorise it, how did they sell her the SourceTech project?"

"There's permission, and there's tolerating something that's already happened," Natasha points out.

"But why not call it off?"

"Loss of reputation, loss of respect, gaol sentences. If she was presented with a done deal, maybe just hours before the SourceTech project announcement..."

Peggy shakes her head, grinning. "Tenner says she's clueless."

"Done!"

 

*********

 

At four twenty-nine in the afternoon precisely, the sprinkler system in Avengers Tower goes haywire throughout the building - except for Pepper's office.

"That's kind of a giveaway all on its own," says her sister.

"It's cute how he tries to be thoughtful even when he's sabotaging his own department and completely ruining all my best-laid plans," says Pepper.

Sarah eyes her sideways. "Sacre bleu, all your wonderful wickedness?"

"I'm melting, I'm melting."

"Your life is nuts."

"Come and work for me when you've got your bar exam," says Pepper.

"Miss Potts," Jarvis interjects. "Mr Stark has asked me to inform you that this was certainly not deliberate, that he apologises profusely, and that Dr Foster needs a new laptop, some cooling cream, and a bandage. Dr Foster is strenuously objecting to this assessment. At Miss Lewis's orders I have now switched off the sprinkler system and reactivated the elevators."

Pepper sighs. "Jarvis, thank you. Suggestions?"

"Leave the matter in Miss Lewis's hands, madam."

"I think I might just do that."

Sarah looks over at her. "I think I'd rather work for Ally McBeal," she says.

 

*********

 

Twenty-three floors below them, Betty Ross is spreading rumours.

 

*********

 

“But _I_ wanted to do that,” Tony says sulkily. “Why don’t _I_ get to do that?”

“You’re the boss, it’d look suspicious,” says Bucky easily.

“Hah. I could totally -”

Steve sighs. “This is ridiculous. Come on, let’s go for pizza, find a pool game. Come on.”

“When you say pool game, you usually mean bar fight,” says Bucky. “Remember Soho? _London_ Soho?”

“What happened in London Soho?”

“Howard spent an extortionate amount on bail money is what happened in Soho.”

“It was Falsworth’s fault, he punched out that guy from his boarding school …”

Tony, laughing helplessly, lets them tug him off the main R&D floor and into the elevator, still bickering.

 

*********

 

The FNG company barbecue is not, strictly speaking, a company barbecue: it is an upper-management barbecue, to which Natalie gained access partly by virtue of being Dr Gates' new PA but mostly by virtue of providing discrete last-minute assistance to people who could not have organised a piss-up in a brewery. It is a comfortably stylish affair, taking place outside a repurposed factory on a sweltering Saturday evening.

Peggy surveys the crowd with the same jaundiced look she applied to their flat. "I'm about to spend the rest of the night playing the stereotypical semi-exotic English aristocrat," she says to Tasha, who grins.

"Have at it."

Natasha might find English aristocrats a little sexy.

A little.

Most of the evening passes in a blur of introductions that slide along through a comfortable haze of white wine - Peggy has a good head for it and doesn't want to stand out too much by turning it down. Peter Sorenson, Annie Roberts, Amy Lee, Abby Tan, Jim Underwood, Alex Carrow...

Alex Carrow, Vice President of FNG.

"Ms Carter," she says, and bows over her hand. "How lovely to meet you."

"Careful, Alex," says Grant with a grin. "Ms Carter's a journalist."

"Charming," she says. "How'd you get an interview with her?"

Peggy smiles. "Hard work and talent."

"Ms Carter has connections," says Grant. "Amanda's excellent new assistant is her wife, which is how she came to write to me."

Carrow's smile grows wider, more genuine. "I do like a person who takes the initiative."

"I've always felt that's what journalism is about," says Peggy.

"Now there's a viewpoint I approve of. When it's pointed at other people!"

 

*********

 

Pepper's phone chimes at around two-thirty in the morning - she always forgets to shut it off - it's a scuffle to reach it before Tony can throw it across the room. There's a text from Peggy.

_Alex Carrow?_

Pepper types back: _I'll check. Why her?_

_High up enough to pull it off without G's knowledge/orders. VERY enthusiastic about the SourceTech programme. Calls it her baby but doesn’t understand a word of the actual science behind it as far as I could tell._

_OK then. Good night._

_You too._

Pepper puts the phone away. Tony props himself on an elbow and says flirtatiously, "Why are you always paying attention to your toys and not me?"

"I have a very powerful company to run, sweetheart," she says. "You know I can't dump it and disappear just because you bat your pretty eyelashes at me. My job's important."

Tony is indignant. "I never bat my eyelashes! Pretty or otherwise."

"It's a figure of speech."

"It's a stupid figure of speech. If I wanted to get your attention, Pepper -"

Pepper swallows. Times like these she's actively ashamed of her _thing_ for his ridiculous mouth. "I have to be up in three hours."

"Four and a half."

"Tony."

He grins. "You'll get the same amount of sleep, oh-Pepper-my-Pepper."

She laughs at him. "Oh, wow, OK, that sounds like a challenge."

"I like challenges."

"I like it when you're challenged too."

He pauses. "Really?"

"It's sexy," she deadpans, so flatly dry that he won't ever suspect she's telling the truth. But Tony, being Tony, grins as if she had been, which of course she was, and bites on his lower lip, speculatively, aaaaaaaand she's gone. She presses him into the pillows, and kisses along his jaw, and shivers when he fits his stupid sexy work-rough hands perfectly in the curve of her waist, and if anyone sees the hickey at her collar bone the next morning, no one comments on it.

(It's not like it's the first one.)

 

*********

 

"Alex Carrow, Harvard, Oxford, three years in Moscow, then home and straight to FNG, where she's been climbing the career ladder 'like a boss', or so Darcy put it," says Maria.

Pepper purses her lips. "What do you think?"

"I don't like the three years in Moscow," says Maria, blunt as a hammer to the back of the head.

"Because of the commie reds?"

"Well, let’s count the ways,” says Maria. “One, the Red Rooms and their supersoldier research. Two, your old friend Vanko – God only knows who _he_ might have been in contact with. Even sold his designs to. Three, two years ago we discovered, if not certain proof then certainly strong hints, that there were or are people in the Kremlin with links to HYDRA. And four, we know three because we know for a fact that Johann Schmidt is alive and was last sighted on Russian soil."

Bucky. Pepper remembers that week, how jumpy Nat had been, how anxious Steve, how they'd all run off half-cocked and without even really briefing Coulson to rescue him. She remembers, though, above all how awful he'd looked when he'd left the jet sandwiched between Nat and Steve, how hurt, how lost; and Bucky, no question, is one of the most resilient people -

Well, but all the Avengers are pretty fucking resilient, that's the point.

Still.

"So you think that..."

Maria swings her feet up onto the corner of her desk and shrugs her shoulders. "I think it would be downright stupid to rule out the possibility that someone has dropped a hint or two to Carrow about Tony's tech and why she needs to pinch it," she says. "I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt, by the way, in not just coming straight out and calling her a suspected HYDRA agent."

"That's extreme. We don't know anything for sure about Schmidt or HYDRA's current form or -"

"Of course not. We don't even know for sure how he managed to get... re-integrated, it's not like Steve was mistaken about the Tesseract making him _dissolve_. But the Russian link is there and we can't afford to ignore it. Assuming Schmidt wakes up in whenever, he then heads off and tracks the super soldier research to Russia. There he makes contact with - well, with someone with links to the KGB, the Red Rooms, maybe a former officer, a leader, whatever. He makes himself useful to them. Peggy, Steve, Bucky all agree that Schmidt's highest priority is Schmidt. So he's running around Russia gathering up the scattered pieces of the super soldier research. Comes across Bucky, recognises him. But he's still under and Schmidt doesn't have a use for him, not yet. And he's building up his operations again, making contacts, getting into the heads of people like Carrow. Then Loki attacks New York and it's impossible to miss the fact that Captain America is not dead at all."

"But what's it got to do with FNG?"

"Everything, Pepper. Remember Bucky's report. When Schmidt's new minions woke him up the mission they gave him was to wipe out the Avengers - _starting with Tony_ as the only one whose identity they were sure of. They fixed on Tony as the obvious target and they're not wrong. Taking him out of the Avengers takes away huge amounts of resources and technology. In a pitched battle it would also remove intel, aerial support... We know from Loki that divide and conquer doesn't really work with our kids. They’re too stubborn. But maybe all you'd have to do is isolate them - just a little - just enough; come at each of them through their individual weaknesses. Tony’s only serious weakness is the extent to which he is reliant on arc reactor tech. If you spread that around the scientific community, if you steal it and make it available to the right people, sooner or later someone _will_ come up with a way to disable it."

Pepper lays her hands flat on the table top so they don't clench or shake or twist into nervous knots. "It's all circumstantial at best. We're jumping to conclusions."

Maria grins. It’s not reassuring. "It’s a worst-case scenario we can’t afford not to be prepared for. Besides, I like conclusions and jumping's fun."

Pepper eyes her friend with a dry look. She knows four words that'll knock her off _that_ high horse.

"You sound like Tony."

Sure enough Maria falls right out of her chair.

 

*********

 

Later that week Natalie jams the photocopier and curses at it in Russian as Carrow comes into the room. The other woman laughs, says, "Let me help you with that," and her own Russian is barely accented at all. "Are you Russian?"

"My mother," says Natalie. "It's actually Natalia. I got sick of all the rhyming jokes in high school."

She watches, silent, as Carrow slides catches and adjusts filters before putting the front casing back on the copier. She's not tall, this Alex, with dark hair and a killer smile, all sharp heels and tailored blouses, but nothing sexy about her, not to Natalie: the mouth too cruel, the eyes too cold. Still, she is objectively attractive, and if required Natalia would be able to -

\- but Natalia has not been required to in a very long time. Nor will she ever be again.

Carrow looks up in time to catch the turn of her head, the flush on her cheeks, the swallow. There is a brief, brief silence. They are standing very close.

"We should have lunch sometime," says Carrow. "It's been too long since I've practiced my Russian."

Natalie looks at her, false glasses slipping, false hair colour at the corners of her vision. "I would... I would like that."

Carrow is smiling when she walks away.

 

*********

 

Natasha goes home that night and scrubs the whole encounter from her skin, using half a bottle of shower gel and shampoo each, rubbing angrily until the water runs cold.

"What happened?"

Peggy misses nothing, but of course the three-quarters of an hour that Natasha has just spent in their rented apartment's little shower would be hard for anyone to miss. You'd have to be as spectacularly unobservant as Tony in the workshop, which for most ordinary human beings takes a superhuman effort.

"Nothing," says Natasha. "I don't understand it."

She knocks back the second vodka and holds out her glass again. Peggy pours for both of them.

"Have you had to since - you and Bucky?"

Hmm. That might be a reason.

"I haven't _had to_ since Clint," says Natasha. "Sometimes, though..."

"Sometimes it's easiest," says Peggy. "Most expedient. Why bother fighting them when you can just... lean forwards?"

"Yes."

"It makes me feel filthy."

"It's just a weapon."

"Some weapons shouldn't have to be used."

Natasha throws her head back and laughs. "It's not going to level cities and kill thousands of people."

Peggy shrugs. "It _is_ going to be degrading, though."

"Only if you let it."

"Well," says Peggy, perhaps slightly waspish, "aren't you letting it?"

Natasha groans. "She... took me by surprise."

Peggy snorts. "Ambushed!" she says melodramatically and starts laughing. A few moments later, so does Natasha.

 

*********

 

"Well, she might not be HYDRA, but she's definitely a rat," says Maria.

"We still _don't know a thing about her_ ," says Pepper.

"Except that she goes around hitting on other people's wives!"

"Yeah," says Nat, "that's uncool, Pepper."

"Uncool. You heard the lady."

"Maria," says Peggy, "are you feeling all right?"

Maria laughs. "Just peachy. I'm kind of having fun with this one. Aren't you having fun with this one?"

Peggy bristles. "No I am not," she says. "FNG's Vice President is going around hitting on my wife."

 

*********

 

"Well, you know," says Betty, waving her beer glass expansively, "I'm just _worried_ , to be honest. The mutation I saw... it'll need further testing, maybe months of further testing, but I'm seeing potential for some nasty side-effects. I really am."

Lena Lockhart pales. It's almost unnoticeable in the dim pub light, but Betty remembers quite clearly that Alan Schmidt didn't when she told him about the mistake in the energy output calculations.

Yahtzee.

 

*********

 

Peggy and Natasha stick it out another two unspeakably dreary weeks in what Maria refers to as the Boonies, though in all fairness that's a misnomer. Their apartment is serviceable, but it was chosen for its first-floor positioning and sturdy fire escape instead of any great comfort or even convenient location. Rather the opposite. If they're going to be attacked in the middle of the night it's better to be on the edge of the town: less chances of civilian casualties and far easier for backup to reach them than if they were positioned in the middle of some aggressively middle-class residential area populated with curious families and anxious rent-a-cops.

Peggy sets about getting her interview with Grant published after all - she sees no reason whatsoever to have her work wasted, and it is quite nice to see her name in print in the Times. But other than that, she spends her days curled in a corner of the cheap sofa, reading a great deal and watching Natasha.

That… sounds creepier than it is. Or maybe it is creepy. Peggy doesn’t know. But they are living together, at least temporarily, they sleep in the same bed, and outside of missions, long before this mission, their lives have become hopelessly, completely entangled.

_Men_ , Peggy thinks. And then, ruefully amending that, _family_. _Look at the messes it can get you into_.

She doesn’t mind that thought as much as she used to.

And Natasha becomes Natalie before she leaves every morning and sloughs the other woman off when she comes back at night as easily as Peggy would put on a coat, without apparently noticing a thing Peggy’s thinking.

"It is like putting on a coat for her," says Steve one evening. "It doesn't matter at all - it doesn't touch her."

Peggy is sitting on the fire escape in the evening sunlight with a glass of white wine and the phone pressed to her ear. Down in the street two boys and a girl are playing football; another girl, much younger, perhaps the sister of one of the football three, is perched on the steps to the back door of her apartment building, singing sleepily to herself and her bear: _me and my teddy bear, got no worries got no cares..._

"I know," says Peggy. "I quite admire it - that _control_ , my God."

"Hmm," says Steve.

"Is that what it feels like to be Cap?"

He's silent for a while; she hears his breathing in her ear. "Yeah, I guess it is."

Peggy laughs quietly. "Funny. I've never thought I might be in love with two different people."

Steve laughs as well.

 

*********

 

Natasha works, and reads, and spends most of her lunch breaks socialising with her co-workers. Saffy Hunt in particular is an entertaining child, cheerful unless irritated or low on caffeine, in which case she can be downright vicious... but still frankly hilarious to 'hang' with. In that way she reminds Natalie of James - an assessment he objects to - _you're not supposed to find me amusing when I'm angry, Nat!_ but that just makes her laugh all the more. _Don't worry, Soldier, I'm the only one who dares_.

She texts with Clint far more than is probably healthy, the way they often do when they're on separate missions, and dashes off emails to Bruce or Tony asking for technobabble translation services, and plays squeeful phone tag with Thor over the latest episodes of _Justified_ , and checks in with Steve: _all ok? - sure. you? - bored now - oh god no quick take up cricket, bored nat = apocalypse - broken any more gym equipment lately? - no but that's because tony and jane had a couple the other day and tried to invent a tardis it's keeping me occupied - up at nights trembling in fear?- well yeah_.

She eats out with Alex Carrow twice; they speak Russian all the way through the meal. Carrow is fluent but still retains an accent; clearly not a native. She’s easily distracted by pretty things, ambitious, ruthless – treats the serving staff like automatons.

There is nothing unusual about her. If Carrow is the one doing this, Natasha decides, she’s doing it for the money. What money that might be, and where it might be coming from, she doesn’t know.

Natasha notices Peggy watching her. She tries her best not to watch back. Sometimes she even succeeds.

And then, Thursday of the fourth week, Dr Gates comes into the office and says, "Can you set up a meet with bio, there's been some concern about mutations as a consequence of the SourceTech? It sounds like bull to me but what do I know, I'm just a physicist."

Yahtzee.

 

*********

 

"Mutations?" says Tony. “Ksenia and Alexei-type mutations?”

"I know it’s not science,” says Betty. “Especially in connection with the arc reactor. But it’s _almost_ plausible if you’re not a scientist.”

“That’s like saying that _Improbability Drives_ almost make sense, which they clearly don’t.”

“I’m sure you’ve regretted that for decades, Zaphod Beeblebrox.”

 

*********

 

Darcy slouches up to Lena Lockhart's desk with a coffee in either hand and the laces of her boots trailing on the floor; it's Friday, she's allowed, although the last time she ran into Rachel Westlake looking like this Westlake had given her the Eyebrow Raise Of Doom, the kind of look not even Coulson could dish out, and plied her with work, because that woman was Cruella De Vil, this was common knowledge, but anyway, right now, yellow boots with laces trailing. She and Lena have been spotted having coffee before, which is why she, Darcy Lewis, Ninja PA, was given this particular job. She'd checked carefully to make sure Lena was in a meeting when she comes by, mind you.

"Huh," she says out loud, arriving at Lena's seat, and then shrugs a philosophical shrug - so much for a ciggie break! - and leans in to put the second coffee on the other woman's desk and leave a note - _:)! D._

It is the single most dishonest smiley-face Darcy has ever drawn. But, like, whatever dude, she doesn't know Lena that well, and it is part of a Ninja PA's duties to be loyal only to her employer - i.e. Pepper Potts, she always has to remind Tony of this - and OK so Tony has kind of grown on her, and there's Jane, and by extension Thor, and by extension all the other Avengers and Darcy really hates the sense she's having right now that she has been coerced into becoming part of a Secret Circle type thing where they have, like, secret handshakes and Take Care Of Their Own first and foremost my God it's like the Mafia, but on the other hand it's a well-known fact that Darcy can walk away any time she chooses and probably get supplied with a name change and a free college degree so she can go anywhere and do anything as long as she sticks to the terms of the confidentiality clause and yet here she is: in Lena Lockhart's office, dropping a tracking device into the other woman's open handbag.

"A Jedi shall not know anger nor hatred nor love," she says gloomily and slouches back out of the office again.

She so fails Jedi training.

 

*********

 

Darcy's mission successfully completed, Command retreats to HQ to plot its next step and eat nachos with cheese. Pepper's office is going to smell delicious for days.

"This is the fakest fake science I have ever had the misfortune to have to falsify," says Betty. "Everyone involved here needs to know this, because as soon as anyone as smart as Amanda Gates gets a glance at it she will laugh her ass off. Tony and I had hysterics before we'd invented a whole page of it. Stargate SG-1 has better science than this. Star Wars has better science. There is a greater likelihood of humanity being wiped out by Triffids than there is of any of this coming true. Vulcan nerve pinches are _feasible_ compared to this."

Pepper looks up from the screen Betty passed her and catches Maria's eye. "Vulcan nerve pinches don't work?"

"Sadly, no," says Maria. "It's the first thing they teach you at Quantico, actually. Listen up, kids: Vulcan nerve pinches don't work."

"I hate you both and this job even more," says Betty, making inroads into the nachos.

 

*********

 

Later that evening Clint catches up with Maria at Canal Street Station.

"Coulson's riding my ass wanting to know what you're up to," he says, appearing out of nowhere at her elbow. Maria doesn't jump. Neither Clint nor Natasha sneak on purpose, they're just ninjas, so she's used to it.

"Tell him to find something else to play with," she says. "Pepper requested _my_ assistance. Fury sent Coulson along for free."

"He won't like that. Phil appreciates being wined and dined."

"He can sit this one out same as you."

Clint laughs. It's a warm, muggy evening; the platform smells of oil and metal and the sweat of far too many people. "Remember seven years ago, starry-eyed Probie Hill with the anxious look? And now you're butting heads with Fury like a pro."

"I am a pro," says Maria. She remembers Probie Hill all too well and doesn't much want to. "Fury's not God, you know."

Clint puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans and tilts his head up to the ceiling. He's wearing wraparound sunglasses, clear eyes hidden. Maria almost wishes for her own, but - no, she'll not hide from this.

"Are you playing us off against each other?" He sounds, if anything, amused.

"No," says Maria.

"Hmm. So Tony owes me fifty bucks."

"Put it like this," says Maria. "I... consider it a moral imperative to support the majority of your commendable endeavours at independence from Fury. But if push came to shove - well, it would take a hell of a shove to get me to break with the loyalty I owe him. That’s a professional thing, not a moral one."

"I understand that," says Clint.

Train pulls in, not Maria's; she sways with the crowd, moving out of their way, winces at the grating noises of metal on metal as it begins to move again. There is a question hovering on her lips that she's afraid to ask.

"If I'd said yes?"

Clint turns his face to her at last, though with those glasses on that's a small, cold comfort. Half a minute ticks by. Maria neither blinks nor looks away.

"Here's your train coming, Agent Hill," says Hawkeye at last.

Maria laughs at him. "That a threat?"

"That's a maybe. It would've depended."

"On?"

"Whether or not whatever it was you were hypothetically up to would've hypothetically hurt my team."

She shakes her head. "This is why I try not to trust you people as far as I could throw you."

He grins. Her train has come and gone, screeching away from the platform. New influx of passengers from above. "I never said we didn't have issues."

"One thing's for sure, your manners are lacking. Can't you buy a girl a drink before you threaten her with subway trains?"

"Sure thing, sweetheart. Come with me and I'll show you a good time."

"Oh no," says Maria. "You're paying, but I'm picking. Come on, I know a place that does a steak you'll want to eat for your last meal on Earth."

Clint laughs at last. "If it's not up to scratch I'll never let you hear the end of it."

 

*********

 

Lena Lockhart's tracker enters the borders of Nat and Peggy's home-in-exile at nine thirty p.m. two days later, travelling west towards the industrial areas.

"There are some abandoned warehouses out there, aren't there?" says Peggy. "How... conventional."

Natasha grunts. "No civilians," she says. Her phone rings before Peggy can answer. It's James.

"Darling, how are you?" Natasha says dryly.

"Your Alex Carrow is a piece of work. Moscow offices of the company she claims to have worked for have never heard of her. Nor has the language school where she supposedly took her Russian lessons."

Natasha glances back at the screen, at the red dot that represents Lena Lockhart, moving to... what? Peggy is watching her, waiting.

"Someone's been naughty."

"I'll say. There’s a link between her and a Swiss shell company called Zimmermann Rot, out of Zug."

Natasha stands in the eye of a storm: the world cannot intrude, does not touch her. Her own breath is very loud in her ears, her heart pounding against her throat.

"Talia, Zimmermann is a Swiss family name -"

"It stands for Red Room, Soldier," says the Black Widow harshly. "It stands for the Red Rooms. Maria mentioned Schmidt. I don't think he's very subtle."

"No," says Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos. "No, sweetheart, subtle he ain't."

"Then -"

"We're on our way."

"You'll be too late to do anything but clean up."

"Then we'll handle clean-up. Natasha, if Carrow is – another, one we never knew about. Kill her and kill her quick. You don't owe her a thing."

"No more than Clint owed me, or we all owed Ksenia. We'll see, James. If she _is_ another..."

"You were always the best."

"And now I'm better still," says Natasha. "What's your ETA?"

He actually chuckles. "107 minutes."

"Then we'll see you soon."

She hangs up. Peggy has not moved.

"Schmidt?" she says.

"Unconfirmed," says Natasha. "Carrow had contact with a group called Zimmermann Rot. My former employers were not so careless with their... their brand. However, it would serve Schmidt's purpose - casts suspicion in another direction, is suitably intimidating for those in the know."

"I've never asked," says Peggy. "Somehow I don't think even Fury ever has. But how many leaders are left?"

Natasha smiles a red red slash in her ice-queen face. "Not enough."

Peggy nods.

 

*********

 

It's not a warehouse after all; it's a high school under construction, labyrinth of corridors and classrooms covered in dust sheets and tools. Peggy and Natasha leave the car at the back of the grounds and follow Lena's tracker to the auditorium, moving as silently as they can. Lena is standing down at the bottom in front of the stage, arms wrapped around herself, shifting from foot to foot – awkward? Nervous? Afraid?

She's talking to Saffy Hunt.

"Ah," says Natasha softly. It makes sense, perhaps more sense than the theory about Carrow, who wouldn't contact Lena on her own: FNG's VP getting in touch with one of SI's R&D administration coordinators? But Hunt, herself a PA, well... that would be different. And for Hunt to tell Natasha all was not well with FNG's new flagship tech: waiting, waiting to see what Nat would do, trying to feel out whether Natasha was a danger or a potential ally.

If Nat feels a pang of regret, looking at Hunt now, for a girl she could easily have grown to like, well, no matter.

"... called me here," Lena is saying. "I kept you updated, that's all I know!"

"You're a liar," says Hunt. "I'm no scientist, but the report you gave us had more holes in it than your average Swiss cheese."

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Yes. That _is_ the impression I'm getting."

Lena is staring. Natasha cannot see her face clearly from up here, but she seems pale; perhaps it's begun to dawn on her that she is playing a far more dangerous game than she thought she was. She and Peggy separate, begin to edge downwards along the rows of seats, clinging to the walls on either side of the auditorium. If this works Hunt will be pinned. If it works.

But no: Lena is surprised, not frightened. "Oh, _please_. This is ridiculous! Saffy, the payment - my brother -"

"Your brother's an idiot - it's just a matter of time before the Atlantic City people beat him to a pulp, probably put him in the Hudson like any good gangster," snaps Hunt. She takes two steps forwards, towards Lena: there is a gun in her belt. She's not moving as if she knows what to actually do with it. Natasha guesses she's carrying it for show. "And you're just as dumb. Are you wearing a wire? Does Stark know you're here?"

"What! No!"

"Or is it the police?"

"The police! Why the hell would I go to the police? I'd have to tell them about Philip. _You're_ the one who's not thinking!"

Lena might be nervous, but she is certainly no coward. Natasha wonders if she can shoot, maybe tell how unutterably useless Hunt is with that gun, or if she just has the common sense to realise that people who are legitimately dangerous to others don't often stick loaded firearms down the front of their own trousers.

She sees Peggy's face, just briefly, in a flash of moonlight lying against the opposite wall, and despite the space separating them Natasha can tell that Peggy is both exasperated and unwillingly amused by the whole production.

"Shut up. Tell the truth, Lena." Hunt draws the gun out. She's holding it all wrong. Lena can definitely shoot; she crosses her arms over her chest and looks contemptuous.

"I _am_ telling the truth. I got the intel and the papers I gave you from Betty Ross directly - I didn't have to steal any damn access codes the way I did with Darcy to get at Stark. Ross told me about the problems herself."

Hunt lowers the gun again, chews at her bottom lip. "She set you up. She must have. They're not stupid, they'll know FNG didn't come up with the tech by themselves, and they're trying to find proof."

"God, Saffy," says Lena, still more annoyed than anything else. "Look, I might not know jack about science, but neither do you, honey. Give the files to your guys, whoever they are, and let them work it out. I can disappear from SI, I'll just quit and -"

"And what!" Hunt yells. "They'll hire someone, they'll find you."

"And torture the details of my industrial espionage out of me, I suppose," says Lena. "Saffy, you're acting like you're in some kind of goddamn Bond movie, expecting the Russians to show up and start shooting at any minute. It's bullshit. Look, we've done what we set out to do, OK?" She swallows. "I paid off some of Philip's debts, and we got the tech out like we wanted to. We knew we might go to gaol for it."

Hunt groans, but she puts the gun down - drops it, in fact, and Natasha doesn't have to look to know Peggy is wincing - and rubs her hands over her face. "I know. OK. OK."

"You're scared," said Lena. "So am I, Saf. But this is right, you know it is. Stark doesn't have a right to keep it to himself. We'll be OK, whatever happens. I haven't sold anyone out, you least of all."

Hunt props her hands on her hips. "Yeah. No, I know."

Lena nods. "Listen, we'll just - we'll take the stuff to our guys. They'll look at it, and Alex can tell us what to do if it turns out that - "

She breaks off in the middle of the sentence; her head snaps strangely forwards and she staggers, falls. It takes Natasha far longer than it should to realise she's just been shot.

Hunt screams, flings herself down, starts scrambling for the gun she dropped. The shot came from - further up, Peggy's side of the hall - Peggy who is already running, chasing after the woman disappearing between the plastic sheets that cover the doorway. Carrow. Natasha lets her run, aiming for Hunt instead, who staggers upright and aims the gun and then gapes.

"Natalie?"

"Hello, Saffy. Put that down."

She doesn't waste as much time as Natasha had hoped wallowing in surprise. "No. Why did you shoot her?"

"Me?" Natasha laughs. "Carrow shot Lena."

"Alex wouldn't do that. She's - we're -"

"In this together? Put the gun down."

Hunt shuffles backwards. Her hands are shaking, but she's managing to seem otherwise calm. "I told you, no. Alex -"

"Saffy, I would be amazed to discover that Alex cares about anyone but Alex. She shot Lena because the stupid kid said her name out loud in a compromising situation in front of two SHIELD agents."

They're close enough that despite the half-light in the auditorium Natasha can see the moment the penny drops for Saffy Hunt very clearly.

"You. You're the Black Widow."

"I am. You -"

Natasha doesn't get to finish the sentence, because there's an explosion somewhere above them, somewhere outside. Hunt yells; everything shakes, there's an almighty noise as a wall comes down, and then a steadily-rising rushing sound of flames climbing high. Natasha can smell smoke already.

Peggy, God, Peggy, Nat has to get out and find her, already turning when Hunt takes a shot at her. The bullet thuds into a step above Nat, sending splinters of cement flying; she spins back to face Hunt to keep the stuff from getting into her face.

"What are you doing?" Natasha asks softly. Peggy, Peggy. Is Maria here yet, are the boys? Peggy. Carrow set the charges, meant to kill Saffy and Lena as soon as she realised Lena had been found out. Peggy went after her.

There's an orange glow on the walls above, through the doors they entered by.

"Shooting at you," says Hunt fiercely. She licks her lips. "You're not going to leave me alive, are you? I might as well."

Natasha can feel her jaw unhinging. "Christ," she says involuntarily. "You're an idiot."

"If you say so. You're a government-sanctioned murderer."

Well, that much was true. Natasha shrugs agreement, mentally settling in for the long haul on this one. She needs to get out of here and find Peggy, dammit.

Over the growing sound of the fire roaring, there's the crack of a gunshot; then another.

"SHIELD?" says Hunt.

"Peggy killing Carrow," says Natasha coolly. If it's not true - God, if it's not true. "Why the espionage?"

Hunt looks incredulous. "Christ, you have to ask?" she says. "Of course you do, you're a murderer. You've probably never done an honest thing in your life."

"I've saved the world a couple times," says Natasha, puzzled.

"Oh, wonderful. Save the world! For what? Huh? Because it's going to hell in a handbasket, and the people you work for are to blame. Selfish lunatics like Tony Stark are to blame."

"Hey - he's _our_ selfish lunatic."

"You can't even deny it."

"Because it's true. Listen, Saffy. That explosion - the site's on fire, you can tell that. We have to _leave_."

Hunt looks like she knows it, but she's too stubborn to back down. "You have to _shut up_. I hope Alex _kills_ your friend."

Staying calm in the face of statements like that takes a very great deal of Natasha's deservedly famous self-control.

"What exactly," she asks quietly, "do you think is going to happen now?"

Hunt shakes her head. "You're going to kill me, I guess, and take the tech back."

"Or I let you live, and you give me the tech back."

" _Fuck_ you."

"I'll take that into consideration," says Natasha.

"You don't get it, do you? You don't care enough to get it. You can't leave arc reactor technology in the hands of a man like Tony Stark, a man who's famous for being a selfish dickhead! You can't leave it in the hands of the government either. You know about the Manhattan Project, you know how that ended - Hiroshima, and then mutually assured destruction - it's sick, it's wrong. It's putting everyone in the world at risk. This tech is powerful, unbelievably powerful, the only way to make it safe is to give it to everyone. Tony Stark prances around the world thinking of himself as some kind of hero, some kind of _guardian_ \- you _all_ do, you people, you think you have the right to make those decisions and funnel that technology into weapons and _killing_ in the name of what, safety? Come _on_. You speak Latin, don't you? Quid custodes ipsos custodies, Natalie?"

"My name", says Natasha and for the first time in years her native Russian accent leaks into her English - she's so angry, and so afraid Hunt is right - "is Natalia Romanova. And to answer your question, Saffy: We do. We watch each other."

Hunt laughs; it's practically a cackle. "And that works, does it? That fucking works?"

"Yes," says Natasha. "It has to. There is no one else but us."

And when Hunt brings the gun up to take unsteady aim Natasha shoots her both her kneecaps out.

 

*********

 

Upstairs, Peggy is tired, and the smoke’s in her eyes and her throat and her lungs, and Carrow hit her with the stock of the rifle she used to kill poor Lena, leaving blood flowing freely down her face, getting into her eyes.

She’s fought past worst.

She’ll fight past this. Carrow planned this damn bloody well, the fire’s spreading far quicker than it should, and Nat –

Nat is still inside. Nat is inside.

Carrow dashes her left arm furiously against the stone edge of the window-seat and Peggy yells – she can feel her wrist snap, feel her hand jump open and let the gun drop, and she scrambles to get her feet underneath her and leverage herself up again, off her back, but Carrow has something of an advantage in that department right now and the only saving grace is that she also has another gun on her, sitting in a holster under her right arm, just waiting for Peggy to free her good hand and take it.

 

*********

 

Natasha drags Saffy out through the back of the auditorium, stumbling over plastic sheets and ladders and paint tins while Hunt sobs and bleeds and finally passes out, smoke chasing after them.

 

*********

 

"Was she right?" she asks Maria afterwards as SHIELD swarms all over site and the sirens go off and the wet drizzle mats her fake false awful hair. "Was she right?"

Maria looks her in the eye, unflinching: Maria never flinches but Natasha has learned how in these last years. "Yes," she says. "Yes, Hunt was right. I've been telling Fury and Steve and Coulson so for years, but Fury's too caught up in his childhood fantasies. He wants to go down in history as the man who gave the world its saviours. He's a fool."

Natasha sighs.

"It's idiocy, but I don't know what the alternative is," Maria says, more softly now. Her mouth flickers, her voice is light. "And the only saving grace we have is that Fury didn't just shape a team of six _remarkable_ people, Natasha. He built one out of six _good_ people."

"I thought you'd say that," says Natasha. "I just hope you're right about the second part as well as the first."

"I am."

 

*********

 

Peggy is standing by Lena's body bruised and bloody. The medics have strapped her left arm across her chest and cleaned out the nasty-looking cut across her forehead; she'll look dreadful in the morning. Behind her another body bag: Carrow. Natasha ducks under a length of crime scene tape and makes her way towards them, hearing Saffy's last words in her memory, rasping against all her sore spots, all her doubts. Peggy sees her first and breaks into a smile: relief and welcome. There's blood on her teeth, her swollen split lip.

Natasha reaches up for the thousandth time to push her hair back - God, she's never getting it cut this way again, not for any kind of mission - and goes to embrace her.

"Hunt?" says Peggy, holding her close.

"She'll live."

Peggy snorts. "Then you've got more mercy than me."

"We'll see if she ever walks again."

"I'd rather she talked."

"I think that'll depend on the deal the DA offers her. What about Carrow?"

"She didn't give me much of an opportunity to ask her questions. We've lost that lead; I'm sorry."

Natasha shakes her head awkwardly, tucked against Peggy. "It doesn't matter," she says.

"We'll see." Peggy sighs. “I very much want Schmidt dead, you know.”

Natasha sighs too. “I know.” Does she ever know.

And Maria coming close, hand on Peggy's back, swap grins with Nat. "Your boys are here," she says.

Peggy laughs then, draws back.

"Well?" says Natasha, wishing it sounded more like a challenge and less like a question.

"Yes," says Peggy, smiling. "Well."

Tasha laughs, keeps an arm around her shoulders, careful of her injured arm.

 

*********

 

"And finally, in the biggest scandal of the year so far, Floria Norton Grant handed over all her company's research into the recently-announced SourceTech to Pepper Potts in person at a New York courthouse this morning and proceeded from there straight to the DA's office to request that charges be brought against her own former Vice President, Alex Carrow, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, for industrial espionage, theft and corruption. Norton Grant is doing a good job of cleaning house, say analysts, and her defenders point to her long stays in Europe in recent months, but the question remains: how much did Floria really know about what was going on under her nose, and if she's telling the truth about not knowing anything: why didn't she know more?"

 

*********

 

In the concrete-and-steel chaos of Tony's lab, Pepper is an island of serenity. She perches on a workbench, because she's always wanted to get to sit on his workbenches and cross her legs at him, and now she gets to do it all the damn time. He's coming over to her shedding goggles and wires and tools she doesn't even have names for, let alone understand the workings of.

"You see the files?"

"I did."

"All there?"

"All there. Most of the research is them trying to retro-engineer our stuff, but there's a couple interesting things... thinking maybe Flo and I should set up a joint venture."

"It'd restore her reputation, look good on our CV."

"I'll call her tomorrow."

"OK then."

"Pepper," Tony says slowly. "Have I said thank you?"

Her pulse jumps up in surprise and delight. "No. No, actually, you have not."

"Well. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Mr Stark," she says, and shifts a little on the workbench. When she tilts her head her hair falls over her shoulder. "Will that be all?"

Something sparks in Tony's eyes - the L-word, it's the L-word, come on Pepper say it. Think it, at least.

In her defence, Tony never has either. (The rate they're going they could get all the way to the honeymoon and beyond before either of them come out with it. Pepper can't tell if they've both got issues or it's just superfluous.)

"No, Miss Potts," he says, voice edged with admiration and want and the L-word all over. "It certainly will not."

"Tony," she says quietly. "Thank you."

He pauses. "What for?"

Oh, nothing, really - my job, my career, my life, my home, your precious self that you gave to me with an awkward shrug and a self-deprecating smile, as if, after you'd made Iron Man, you had no more use for Tony Stark the human, the vulnerable, so off you pawned him piece by piece, first his body, then his heart, then his company: did you think I'd accept him for safekeeping alone, seal him away in a box like Pandora's while you tied yourself into knots following your self-imposed duties? I'll keep you, Tony, I'll keep you always - but both of you, or there's no point to either.

"Everything."

Tony's always been cute when he's speechless. Pepper supposes it's the novelty of it that gets to her.

 

*********

 

Steve is sleeping like the dead, but Peggy cannot manage to. She shifts around and thumps her head into the pillows and counts sheep for maybe an hour before she gives up and slides out of their bed. It's full moon and their lounge is lit with silver, throwing the shadow of the man at the window across the floor in deepest black.

She sucks in a startled breath. He's facing her, tall and thin in a long, sweeping coat and hair to his shoulders. She can see the colour of his eyes even in the dark, a dim but visible green.

Sometimes, when he is not concentrating, when he forgets to hide it, Thor's eyes burn the same way.

"You're Loki."

"Agent Carter," he says, his accent English to her ears. "How very nice to see you again."

"Again?"

He smiles. That, too, she sees: but this is because he has become less solid, almost transparent, the moonlight shining through his form. His shadow has dimmed to almost nothing.

"Of course. You brought me here."

"I did. Well, it was unintentional."

"That's right. You wanted the stone out of HYDRA's hands." She does not mention how very telling it is that the safest place Loki Lie-Smith could find for a piece of tech he wanted kept hidden was in the hands of his supposed enemies - in the hands, really, of his brother.

" _Stone_? Oh.” He shrugs. “It’s as good a word as any. Either way your intervention destroyed it."

"I apologise."

"Not at all."

It's like watching a snake coiling in the grass, wondering whether it will strike, when it will strike, whether you ought to be running away as fast as you can or stand perfectly still and hope it leaves you alone.

"So you're here now..."

"To congratulate you, of course."

"I killed a woman. That's not supposed to be cause for celebration."

"Anything that keeps dear Tony's ingenious tech out of the hands of the man you know as Johann Schmidt is surely a cause for celebration."

Peggy latches on to the salient point despite his teasing, pointed tone.

"What else is he known as?"

Loki smiles. "Nothing else yet," he says. "But there is... potential."

"For what?"

"For him to be made a bridge of sorts, for his body to become an opening. He fell through, you know, when I activated the Tesseract... was reconstituted. Brought back together. The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth back. Is that not what your holy writing says?"

"Do you mean you feel responsible?"

The God of Mischief laughs at her. "I never do."

"But?"

"I have a particular grudge against the personage currently seeing Schmidt as an opportunity to build himself gateways into your world. I dislike being used. Gods tend to. We're quite vain that way."

"So it's a private vendetta that just so _happens_ to coincide with the question of the fate of my planet."

Loki sighs. "Very well, Agent, I'll be honest with you. This imprisonment will not last forever. _Obviously_." He spreads his arms wide, palms upward, and his shadow shimmers, darkens briefly, returns to something almost-there, like the shade of a thin gauze curtain across a window. "And it is my humble ambition to get to grind this planet under my _own_ boot heel. Much less satisfying to watch from the sidelines."

Peggy feels herself smile in return, only partly amused. Loki Lie-Smith's talents plainly do not exhaust themselves in telling falsehoods to others.

"Why tell me?"

Loki shrugs. "In Asgard my people are none too impressed with the talents of women. But then, they're none too impressed with mine either. Give Agent Romanov my regards, will you?"

He's gone in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Peggy hadn't had time to make the smallest movement. She sighs, irritated, and snaps the light on. All this melodrama - really, it's quite ridiculous. No wonder Loki looked as though he were thoroughly enjoying himself. Well, he does seem the type to be easily bored; after a few years in prison he'll probably find cross-stitching an engrossing pastime.

She texts Nat - _Loki sends his regards_ \- and gets one back thirty seconds later - _what did he want?_

_I think he's bored tbh._

The next one she gets is an ellipsis, nothing more.

_Perhaps we should send him a care package. Some books, a smartphone._

_go to bed, peggy. i'm pretty sure you've got something in there that'll be happy to entertain you._

Peggy bursts out laughing. _Sorry, was I interrupting?_

_... not yet ..._

"Peggy?" Steve, woken by her laughter, barefoot and shirtless in the doorway. Peggy glances over, eyes catching on his ruffled hair, those ridiculously blue eyes, his broad shoulders, the cut of his hips. He props his hands on them, easy, unselfconscious, smiling at her. "Can't sleep?"

Peggy switches her phone off. "Not really."

"Need to talk about it?"

She smiles: hopelessly, stupidly, impossibly infatuated. "Not really." He laughs at her. She moves around the sofa, back into his arms. "Tomorrow morning? I’m just glad to be home right now."

“Happy to hear it,” he says, hands sliding up her back, into her hair. “I’m happy you’re home too.”

“I thought you might be,” Peggy says solemnly and hitches up on her tiptoes to catch his mouth with hers. It crosses her mind, as they kiss, that Loki might still be here – might be _watching_ – and she almost wants to die of embarrassment just at the notion. But then again, Peggy is fairly sure there are more interesting things he could be doing than playing Peeping Tom.

Embroidery, for example. The thought makes her grin, which Steve notices. He pulls back a little: “Hmm?”

“Nothing,” Peggy repeats, wrapping her arms around his neck. “At least, nothing I want to talk about now. Just take me to bed, will you?”

“Well, if you’re sure. That’s a comfortable couch,” and Peggy flings her head back and laughs.


End file.
